People v. Durborow

MARKS, J.

Appellant was convicted of murdering James Basham and was sentenced to imprisonment for life. She has appealed from the judgment and from the order denying her motion for new trial. She urges the following grounds for a reversal of the judgment: (1) That the trial court erred in admitting evidence of defendant’s extrajudicial statements in the absence of proof of a

corpus delicti;

(2) that the evidence is insufficient to sustain the judgment; (3) that the trial court erred in its ruling upon certain objections to the admission of evidence at the trial; (4) that the district attorney was guilty of prejudicial misconduct during the course of the trial.

[617]

Appellant and James Basham were husband and wife on January 9, 1932, the date of his death. They had separated prior to that date and appellant was living in a small dwelling with William Gallagher Durborow and was known to some as Mrs. Gallagher, At about 1:30 o ’clock in the morning of January 9, 1932, Basham and a friend went to this house, where they found appellant and Durborow. The three men consumed a quantity of alcoholic liquor, each drinking about the same amount and from the same containers. Interspersed with their drinking Basham and Durborow engaged in a series of fist fights which resulted in Basham receiving bruises on his face and head and a fractured cartilege in his nose. None of these injuries were serious enough to cause his death. When Basham was found dead at about 4 o’clock in the afternoon of January 9th, there was clotted blood of a normal color in his nostrils.

Durborow took Basham’s friend in his automobile and drove away from the premises at about 6:30 o’clock in the morning, leaving appellant and Basham in the house. Appellant, clothed in a nightgown, was in the one bed in the house. Though a quantity of liquor had been consumed by the three men, and they were all intoxicated, they were all able to walk and to talk. The house was in confusion and disarray, as a result of the fighting, with furniture overturned and broken, cigarettes, ashes and matches scattered over the floor.

The dwelling contained but one bedroom. The bed stood with its head against the east wall of the room, the southeast corner of the bed flush against the frame of a door opening into a bathroom, and the northeast corner about ten inches from a gas jet which protruded out of the east wall. A gas stove, when in use, was connected with the jet by means of a hose which was of sufficient length to reach from the jet across the north half of the bed. There was one window in the south wall of the bedroom and another in the south wall of the bathroom which opened from the southeast corner of the bedroom.